[30] A principal evil, amongst the native Scottish judges, was a predilection for their own allies and kinsmen. A judge, who lived within the eighteenth century, justified this partiality for "kith, kin, and ally," by saying, "that, upon his conscience, he could never see any of his friends were in the wrong;" and the upright conduct of Cromwell's English judges being objected to him, he answered, "it was not wonderful, since they were a set of kinless louns who had no family connections to bias them."
[31] There are all shapes and forms of poetical addresses upon this occasion, by clergymen, and scholars, and persons of honour. Among them, the verses by Waller are most celebrated; though inferior to those which he composed on the Protector's death. When Charles made this remark, the bard, with great felicity, reminded his Majesty, that poets always excel in fiction. Among other topics, he enlarges on the "tried virtue, and the sacred word," of the witty monarch. It is singular, that, of the three distinguished poets, who solemnized by elegy the death of the Protector, Dryden and Waller should have hailed the restoration of the Stuart line, and Sprat have favoured their most arbitrary aggressions upon liberty.
[32] In "A Poem to His Most Excellent Majesty, Charles the Second, Ego beneficio tuo (Cæsar) quas ante audiebam hodie vidi Deos: Nec feliciorem ullum vitæ meæ aut optavi aut sensi Diem, by H. Buston, Winton; together with another, by Hen. Bold, olim Winton," the royal genealogy is thus deduced from the primitive father of mankind:
On which side shall we trace your stock? beyond